Motivation and radiography

INTRODUCTION: The SAFE EUROPE project, a European-funded project, addressed educational gaps of Therapeutic Radiographers/Radiation Therapists (TR/RTTs) by offering a series of free webinars. This study aimed to assess the quality of these webinars and their impact on professional practice. METHODS: Data collection involved two methods: an automated feedback form administered after each webinar, supplemented by a survey disseminated through social media. The collected data encompassed attendance statistics, participants' professions and geographic locations, webinar quality assessment, the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, the application of this newfound knowledge in practice, and the likelihood of recommending these webinars...

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of disease burden worldwide, with a significant proportion of cases and deaths attributable to modifiable risk factors. Recent interest has emerged in using cardiac computed tomography (CT) imaging as a tool to enhance motivation and drive positive behavioural changes. However, the impact of providing visual feedback of plaque from CT on risk factor control and individual health behaviours remains understudied. This study aimed to assess the effects of visual feedback from cardiac CT imaging on health-related behaviours and risk factor control...

Score-based generative model (SGM) has risen to prominence in sparse-view CT reconstruction due to its impressive generation capability. The consistency of data is crucial in guiding the reconstruction process in SGM-based reconstruction methods. However, the existing data consistency policy exhibits certain limitations. Firstly, it employs partial data from the reconstructed image of iteration process for image updates, which leads to secondary artifacts with compromising image quality. Moreover, the updates to the SGM and data consistency are considered as distinct stages, disregarding their interdependent relationship...

INTRODUCTION: Radiographer-led reporting originated in the United Kingdom as a strategy to reduce reporting backlog and time taken to report images. The effectiveness of reporting radiographers has been demonstrated, but their motivational factors have not been thoroughly explored. This survey aims to understand the incentives for radiographers to pursue postgraduate education in reporting radiography across Europe. METHODS: An online survey was conducted, collecting data across a range of topics such as demographic information, professional role, and job satisfaction...

INTRODUCTION: Professional development is a concept inclusive of all learning such as postgraduate qualifications, staff development, and reflective practice, pursued for the betterment of radiographers' professional expertise. Professional development is associated with professional capabilities and quality service delivery to the patient, and this understanding of professional development applies to the radiography profession. The study aimed to explore and describe the perceptions of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) radiographers regarding the role of professional development in clinical practice...

Cone-beam CT (CBCT) is a promising tool with increasing applications in musculoskeletal imaging due to its ability to provide thin-section CT images of the appendicular skeleton and introduce weight bearing, which accounts for loading forces that typically interact with and affect this anatomy. CBCT devices include an x-ray source directly opposite a digital silicon detector panel that performs a single rotation around an object of interest, obtaining thin-section images. Currently, the majority of research has been focused on the utility of CBCT with foot and ankle pathologic abnormalities, due to the complex architectural arrangement of the tarsal bones and weight-bearing nature of the lower extremities...

The accurate segmentation of brain tumor is significant in clinical practice. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based methods have made great progress in brain tumor segmentation due to powerful local modeling ability. However, brain tumors are frequently pattern-agnostic, i.e. variable in shape, size and location, which can not be effectively matched by traditional CNN-based methods with local and regular receptive fields. To address the above issues, we propose a shape-scale co-awareness network (S2 CA-Net) for brain tumor segmentation, which can efficiently learn shape-aware and scale-aware features simultaneously to enhance pattern-agnostic representations...

PURPOSE: To determine how radiology, nuclear medicine, and medical imaging journals encourage and mandate the use of reporting guidelines for artificial intelligence (AI) in their author and reviewer instructions. METHODS: The primary source of journal information and associated citation data used was the Journal Citation Reports (June 2023 release for 2022 citation data; Clarivate Analytics, UK). The first- and second-quartile journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Emerging Sources Citation Index were included...

INTRODUCTION: Existing literature provides valuable insight into the application of evidence-based practice (EBP) in Radiography; however, it primarily focuses on localised, context-specific scenarios within individual countries or institutions. This review aims to systematically explore the barriers to EBP and research implementation in clinical Radiography practice internationally. METHODOLOGY: A mixed-method systematic review was implemented to obtain data from primary studies of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods designs...

PURPOSE: We developed a novel patient-radiologist consultation for patients scheduled for lung cancer screening (LCS). We hypothesized that this intervention would improve patient attitudes towards LCS adherence and smoking cessation. METHODS: This quality improvement project enrolled 38 LCS patients (a majority were African American) and included 20 current and 18 former smokers. The intervention, a 5-10 min consultation with a radiologist who provided preliminary interpretation of pertinent imaging findings in conjunction with smoking cessation counseling, took place in the radiology reading room immediately after the low dose computed tomography (LDCT) patient scan...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the use of reporting checklists and quality scoring tools for self-reporting purposes in radiomics literature. METHODS: Literature search was conducted in PubMed (date, April 23, 2023). The radiomics literature was sampled at random after a sample size calculation with a priori power analysis. A systematic assessment for self-reporting, including the use of documentation such as completed checklists or quality scoring tools, was conducted in original research papers...

INTRODUCTION: Journal clubs (JC) have emerged as a popular tool within medical and health professions to deliver outcomes such as promotion of evidence-based practice (EBP), improvement of critical appraisal skills, as well as stimulation of research interest among participating professionals. However, the delivery of these outcomes within the diagnostic radiography profession has not been evidenced and this is the aim of this service evaluation. METHODS: This evaluation adopted a pre- and post-evaluation survey design to explore the impact of a novel JC introduced among diagnostic radiographers in a UK NHS Trust...

OBJECTIVES: To assess cumulative effective dose (CED) over a 4-year period in patients undergoing multimodality recurrent imaging at a major hospital in the USA. METHODS: CED from CT, fluoroscopically guided intervention (FGI), and nuclear medicine was analyzed in consecutive exams in a tertiary care center in 2018-2021. Patients with CED ≥ 100 mSv were classified by age and body habitus (underweight, healthy weight, overweight, obese), as per body mass index percentiles < 5th , 5th to < 85th , 85th to < 95th , and ≥ 95th (age 2-19 years), and its ranges < 18...

PURPOSE: This study aims to investigate the uptake of transradial approach (TRA) and outpatient setting for transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) and transarterial radioembolization (TARE) in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) among French interventional radiology centers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was based on a 34-question survey assessing center activity, radial access, and outpatient care. The survey was developed by a working group, tested by two external experts, and distributed to active members of two French radiological societies via a web-based self-reporting questionnaire in March 2022...

(1) Background: This study aims to comprehensively understand the motivations driving radiographers in five Arab countries to engage in research. (2) Methods: A cross-sectional study employing an anonymous online survey was conducted for 12 weeks from May to July 2023. The study sample consisted of 250 radiographers, with equal representation from Iraq, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. (3) Results: Overall, the participants showed limited involvement in research-related activities in all five countries, particularly in presenting at conferences and publishing in peer-reviewed journals...

Brain extraction, or the task of segmenting the brain in MR images, forms an essential step for many neuroimaging applications. These include quantifying brain tissue volumes, monitoring neurological diseases, and estimating brain atrophy. Several algorithms have been proposed for brain extraction, including image-to-image deep learning methods that have demonstrated significant gains in accuracy. However, none of them account for the inherent uncertainty in brain extraction. Motivated by this, we propose a novel, probabilistic deep learning algorithm for brain extraction that recasts this task as a Bayesian inference problem and utilizes a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) to solve it...

INTRODUCTION: Clinical practice can be a challenging experience for some healthcare students. The quality of the clinical experience can have a profound effect on the overall student learning experience in clinical practice and attrition. The aim of the study was to explore the perceptions of an optimal clinical practice experience by radiography and sonography students and qualified clinical staff. METHODS: A qualitative research design was adopted utilising focus groups (n = 5)...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: Radiology is an increasingly competitive specialty. Various current factors influence medical students' decision to pursue a radiology career, including artificial intelligence (AI), remote reading, and COVID-19. This study seeks to determine the decision-making factors of all alumni from our medical school who matched into a radiology residency, and to gather opinions on emerging radiology topics. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A survey querying decision-making factors and opinions on current radiology topics was distributed to all alumni from our medical school (first graduating class in 2011) who previously matched into a diagnostic or interventional radiology residency program (n = 57)...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the usage of a well-known and widely adopted checklist, Checklist for Artificial Intelligence in Medical imaging (CLAIM), for self-reporting through a systematic analysis of its citations. METHODS: Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus were used to search for citations (date, 29 April 2023). CLAIM's use for self-reporting with proof (i.e., filled-out checklist) and other potential use cases were systematically assessed in research papers...

PURPOSE: Reduction in iodinated contrast medium (CM) dose is highly motivated. Our aim was to evaluate if a 50% reduction of CM, while preserving image quality, is possible in brain CT angiography (CTA) using virtual monoenergetic images (VMI) on spectral CT. As a secondary aim, we evaluated if VMI can salvage examinations with suboptimal CM timing. METHODS: Consecutive patients older than 18 years without intracranial stenosis/occlusion were included. Three imaging protocols were used: group 1, full CM dose; group 2, 50% CM dose suboptimal timing; and group 3, 50% CM dose optimized timing...